I had such a fantastic time working with the Cubefit team to shoot this product video within a very short window of time. Due to a ton of scheduling conflicts I only had about half an hour to film the fantastic female model, Tasha, and due to short lighting windows I had about the same amount of time to shoot the male model, Todd. Both of them were so easy to work with and I hope to have them on set again!

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Shooting on film has been a dream of mine for quite a few years, so when my old friend James reached out to do a music video for his upcoming release my only requirement is that we shoot it on Super 16mm film. Having taken a workshop with Kodak and made friends with the Kodak gang I reached out to set up our pipeline which is not nearly as costly or cumbersome as many may presume. The only real downside was the timeline was rather fast, so while I had many grand ideas there was not enough time to test them. I did luck out with having my friend Alonso Lujan stepping in to DP for me while I did most of the camera operating. I was excited to finally shoot on my Aaton Xtera which is an exceptional camera.

The shoot ended up being about 11 hours in 2 locations, with a team of local professionals and great friends (see credits below).

Director of Photography: Alonso Lujan
Gaffer: Daniel Flores
1st AC: Carina Halligan
2nd AC: Mike Cook
BTS Photography: Essam Osman
Soundman: Ian Robertson
Model/Actress: Audrey Smith

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A stylized commercial for a series of fine pens. The client wanted something flashy and incorporating shadowplay.

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A short video ad for a food product, a dispenser. This was really fun since I’ve made very few food videos, but I ended up really loving the look and styling and can imagine fleshing this out even more extravagantly for the right product. My favorite part of this was actually animating the text to mimic the dispenser, felt like the right touch to add a cute layer to a cute product video.

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A fun demo and lifestyle video for some beautiful leather camera straps. Produced to be run as a commercial video ad, and for an Amazon product page.

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This was a really fun shoot for a few reasons. I was excited to work with Song Faulkner, the model in the video as I haven’t had enough opportunities to work with models lately. I love faster shoots where we are creating on the fly, and in this case we shot this sequence in 2 hours without a location scout. I picked the time of day to enable us some nice daylight hours and to end with the sun setting to get some golden hour goodness. I’ve also been wanting to dip into more fashionable content, which this gave us in spades. Song pops right off the screen, the bag looks great, and we had an amazing time creating this short piece!

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The Harbinger AR Glove Sizer is an app that that allows you to measure your glove size without having to worry about ordering something that won’t fit. This commercial acts as a demo for how the app works. We shot it in the awesome & beautiful SICFIT gym in Round Round, Texas thanks to the owner Mike Allred.

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I’ve been wanting to incorporate dance into street cinematography for a while now. I also bought a new wide angle lens and wanted to create a video production that challenged me to shoot in a style that I’m not used to filming (i.e. wide angles; architecture).

Working with the dancers was incredibly exciting. If I had it to do over again I would love to have a day of rehearsal beforehand to practice the camera moves, the focus pulls, compositions, etc. However, they were donating their time and some were driving in from out of town to arrive on set before dawn, so I was still super happy that anyone even showed up, let alone performed beautifully and with such great attitudes!

The lens is great. The salesman at Austin’s Precision Camera talked me into the Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 Art Lens, instead of the Canon 16-35 f/2.8. I had a couple weeks to figure out if I wanted to keep the lens or not and threw together a quick video production to test it out. After writing a few scripts and finally landing on one that would blend Austin’s skyline & personality with dancing I had to start scouting locations and create a shot list. I have never done much with wide angle lenses before and definitely wanted to incorporate as much as possible while still creating room for testing the lens out in a variety of distances and subjects. I ended up absolutely loving the lens, so glad that I own it. My only two wishes are that I wish it had Image Stabilization to smooth out handheld shots, which I love doing, but won’t be doing many handheld video productions with this lens; and I wish the auto-focus were faster, but I rarely use AF so it’s not a huge deal to me. Creating this was incredibly fun and reminded me so much of my past project shooting the sports-focused “Ironman” documentary video.

The post My City: A Love Letter to Austin appeared first on Icarus Burning Productions.

This is the second short film I’ve written & directed and starred in (see my “Office Zombies” short film to see how I’m progressing), and will likely not be the last. I had a great team and cast to work with, and learned so much from this project. We shot this on a Canon C300 with the Canon CN-E Primes from Austin Movie Gear. We also used the Letus Anamorphx Adapter to give us the anamorphic widescreen look.

Shooting anamorphic in this style is an interesting challenge, because placing an adapter in front of a lens meant constant adjusting in order to find the proper focal plane. If I shoot another film anamorphically then I definitely want to just get anamorphic lenses to help simplify setups and focus pulls. Of course anamorphic lenses are not cheap, but for the right script I think it can definitely be worth it.

Location scouting is always a bit tough. I had a strong visual image of the coffee shop that I couldn’t quite find. I wanted to seat the leading lady next to a window and shoot through the window to capture some nice bokeh reflections and give a strong sense of the viewer glimpsing into her life. What I found turned out to be a lot better when I stumbled across Caffé Medici who were incredibly gracious with their time in allowing us to film in their absolutely gorgeous coffee shop (and they make excellent coffee as well).

The music is scored by Todd Sapio, which I think turned out just beautifully. I was hoping to add a little more rhythm towards the end of the montage, but we ultimately ran out of time and I think it still worked rather well. His band, Kiona, is featured at the end of the film, too. Great great music!

You can find more info and BTS photos on this project here!

The post “Where We Ended” (Short Film) appeared first on Icarus Burning Productions.

I’ve worked with Todd on several video productions (“Threads” short film, “Where We Ended” short film, “Office Zombies” short film), and they usually turn out pretty darn good. In addition to being a film producer, Todd is also a triathlete, which is incredibly intense and requires a severe amount of training. For the past year we’ve kicked around the idea of putting together a video production of his training, but we finally kicked into gear when he needed an entry video for a documentary series centered on Ironman athletes training for Kona, which I take to be the Ironman championship.

We grabbed a GoPro with underwater housing; our friends & frequent collaborators Joe & Heather Howes at Folding Rain, who are beginning their drone services; and we sketched out a script and shot in the course of two very early mornings. Probably about 8 hours of shooting all together, and a few hours of editing. All for a 60 second video.

The scripting began with Todd sending me a storyboard of all the things he envisioned that fully told his story of getting into triathlons and Ironman competitions. He did a great job of putting all of his ideas down and then told me to do whatever made the most sense to me. I read through Todd’s script several times and chewed on it for a day or two. I knew we did not need to throw the kitchen sink at this project, because his story was so emotionally compelling I really loved trying to simplify and reduce the number of setups to let the emotional beats resonate. Of course, with the tight schedule on this video production it also helped to reduce the stress of shooting everything we needed.

The original script called for a lot of family, and my revisions stripped out all of that footage, but I didn’t want to lose that visual context. So, I thought it made perfect sense to set up the video projector sequence that would not only allow us to add context to Todd’s life, but it also added a more symbolic element by more closely identifying with Todd as we are seeing the world through his eyes. Having the projector casting onto the wall while he’s training gives a strong visual sense of what he’s motivated by, his goals, and where his thoughts are. It also adds a rather pleasing visual touch to the video production value.

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An incredibly thoughtful video. There are certain historical moments in our history that deserve to be remembered and reiterated, so I was honored and cautious when the UT professors decided to incorporate September 11th, 2001 into this video about understanding the context of any given work. They found it important to teach on multiple levels, not only furthering their students’ English education but also finding a way to respectfully inform them of such a recent national tragedy that has become ingrained in our national identity.

The post Univ. of Texas: “Reading Text and Context” (Documentary) appeared first on Icarus Burning Productions.

Working with the English professors at the University of Texas was a great joy that resulted in some work that we’re all very proud to have our names on. The first of which started with The Oxford English Dictionary, what it is and how to use it. No better way to test our creativity than making a video about the dictionary! I often like to challenge myself, by setting an idea that I have no idea how to execute and then figuring it out. During the scripting phase I got a transition in my head to move from a dictionary page to an interview by way of some kind of Matrix-like animation, and I loved how it turned out. This video was our collective starting point and think our work only got better from here!

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There is no quick or certain path to creating a documentary video for a public university on a topic as sensitive as race. A great deal of deliberation, rewriting, and editing took place as we (the professors and myself) tried to hone the message and the best images/animations to accompany the voiceover. My favorite moment came as I was struggling to figure out a good animation regarding the emphasized word “Power”, and after some suggestions from the professors I grabbed onto their idea of referencing the WWII Japanese internment camps that the USA implemented which led me to a treasure trove of Ansel Adams photos he took of some camps. I had so much fun tearing apart the image to create some depth, and giving it a vintage film style.

I got to sit inside of a lecture and film some of the students (who all signed waivers) which was an interesting experience. One of my favorite aspects of making a documentary is the lack of control you have to deal with. Sometimes, you get to set up an interview and take your time setting up lights and crafting a great shot, but quite often you have to work with the light that’s available in the room, and you can’t stage the actors or props to create the perfect composition. I really enjoy the challenge of having to create on the fly!

In this documentary I had to shoot two interviews and a classroom of students without any lighting or staging. Due to budget & time constraints I had to work fast. No tripods, no sliders, no lights, just my camera and my creative eye. I loved the challenge and think we created some beautiful shots that really helped compel the story forward. For the interviews I advised crafting the questions beforehand and coordinating with the professors to help us dial in our message which would give us more time to capture the dialog we needed. Not all things go as planned, however, and the end result was that the interviews were more off the cuff which meant a bit more editing and refining, but the benefit was that the tone was much more natural and personal.

The post Univ. of Texas: “Reading Race” (Documentary) appeared first on Icarus Burning Productions.

This is part of a series of documentary videos I filmed for the University of Texas’ Department of English. This video tackled annotating in a book (the why, the how, etc). I had a great time working on this because it largely was a physical production and I was excited to incorporate these animations into a real world setting instead of doing everything purely in After Effects. I had a small but great team to help with the shoot, and brought on Erick Bolyard to assist with a couple of the VFX shots.

I brought in Ricky Holm to be my director of photography and operate the camera. I normally prefer lighting and camera operating myself, but we had a short day to accomplish a whole lot of setups. So, having Ricky and a couple of other hands on set really helped me focus on directing instead of worrying about gear and getting critical focus and the physical tolls that it all takes. Being able to just watch the composition & performances on a monitor and give notes makes the entire documentary more efficient, and cuts down on wasted takes and surprises in the editing room.

Let’s talk briefly about the animations! Working through the documentary script with the professors we arrived on the idea that it made a lot of sense to mix in animations with real footage as it symbolizes in video form what we’re instructing students to do on their own. That is to say we wanted to mark up the video since the students would be marking up their books. This added a great dynamic quality to the documentary, because sometimes an educational documentary can be rather dull, so anything that not only assists clarifying a point but creates visual interest for the video’s viewer is double-plus good.

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It helps to be able to have these short projects that I can shoot and have completed within hours, keeps my juices flowing and gives me a sense of accomplishment. Sometimes, I get locked into video projects that have really lengthy production cycles and it can start to feel creatively stifling when you don’t get to experiment with new styles or when you’re creating in a more collaborative scenario. So, being able to find awesome people and walk into a new environment without any idea of what I’ll be dealing with in terms of lighting and backdrop can be invigorating.

The Austin video scene is filled with artistic and amazing people to work with so you’ll see a good variety of subject matter ranging from artists, sculptors, athletes, musicians, and more. I loved making each one of these, but perhaps my favorite was Elisa, the abstract painter because there was no way to predict what she would do next, because she is so in the moment and is creating based on experience and intuition which means anything could happen next. As she’s finishing one brush stroke she may see something out of the corner of her eye to touch on next. Trying to capture this felt like I was playing jazz, it was absolutely thrilling and I think the results are gorgeous.

Check out some of the videos below, I’ve kept them short & sweet!

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This is a mini-documentary we produced for William Chris Vineyards, a winery in Hye, Texas which is located just outside of Fredericksburg. For the uninitiated, Fredericksburg is a hotbed of Texas-made wine, and William Chris is run by some incredible winemakers. Fix yourself a glass and enjoy!

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